Inzunza told to report to prison by Jan. 30

San Diego  More than six years after a jury found him guilty of selling his San Diego City Council seat for campaign cash from a Las Vegas strip-club owner, Ralph Inzunza is heading off to prison.

Former San Diego Councilman Ralph Inzunza leaves federal court Friday after a judge told him he has until Jan. 30 to report to a prison in Merced County. He was convicted in 2005 of public corruption. — John Gastaldo

Former San Diego Councilman Ralph Inzunza leaves federal court Friday after a judge told him he has until Jan. 30 to report to a prison in Merced County. He was convicted in 2005 of public corruption.
— John Gastaldo

“It’s time,” U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller said in a brief hearing on Friday, “to bring this matter to a close.”

Miller ordered Inzunza, 42, to report to a federal prison in Merced County by Jan. 30. There, at a minimum-security federal camp on the grounds of a larger, high-security federal penitentiary, Inzunza will begin serving a 21-month sentence.

Once a rising star in local Democratic politics, Inzunza said nothing during the hearing, sitting with his hands folded in front of him at a table in the courtroom. More than a dozen supporters filled the seats behind him.

Inzunza waved off a reporter afterward and quickly walked by news cameras staked out on the plaza in front of the downtown federal courthouse into a car waiting on Front Street.

The muted hearing in front of Miller capped one of the city’s most infamous political corruption cases. Inzunza was charged along with then-Councilmen Michael Zucchet and Charles Lewis, strip-club owner Michael Galardi and Las Vegas lobbyist Lance Malone.

Inzunza was convicted in July 2005 of extortion, honest services wire fraud and conspiracy for trading political favors for campaign contributions from Galardi, then-owner of the Cheetah’s strip club in San Diego and several clubs in Las Vegas.

Prosecutors said Inzunza agreed to work to relax a city ordinance banning touching at such clubs in exchange for campaign contributions.

Lewis died before the trial. A jury convicted Zucchet, but Miller acquitted him of seven of the nine charges and ordered new trials on the other two. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, and last year prosecutors dropped their pursuit of the remaining two charges against Zucchet.

He is now head of the Municipal Employees Association, the largest public employees union in the city of San Diego.

In 2005, Malone was sentenced to 36 months in prison, and two years later Galardi was sentenced to 15 months in prison.

The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month turned down Inzunza’s final appeal, setting up the final court hearing Friday in the long-running case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat wanted Inzunza to be sent off to prison on Friday. He told Miller that years of appeals had given Inzunza plenty of time to get his affairs in order and prepare for prison.

After the hearing, Wheat said the lengthy appeals showed Inzunza “had his full measure of due process” from the legal system.

Inzunza will likely have to do at least 85 percent of his 21-month sentence, or about 18 months, before he could be eligible for release. The prison camp, about 60 miles north of Fresno, houses 128 inmates.